A well-known Muslim public figure killed in Moscow

April 12, 2012, 12:34 UTC+3The detectives believe that Mekhtiyev came under an armed attack

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On Tuesday, a well-known Muslim public figure Metin Mekhtiyev, an Azerbaijani citizen, who lived and worked in Russia, was killed in Moscow. On Wednesday, the Investigation Committee voiced the main theory of the murder. The detectives believe that Mekhtiyev came under an armed attack. A mobile phone, the portmonaie with 5,000-6,000 roubles and the keys from the flat were stolen from him.

The witnesses also confirmed the theory of the detectives. Spokesperson from the main Moscow investigation department of the Investigation Committee Viktoria Tsyplenkova told the Novye Izvestia daily that unidentified bandits attacked Mekhtiyev at about one hours on Tuesday on the second Brestskaya Street. They beat him up and cut the throat and he died of this wound. Then the attackers have made several knife cuts on his face. The residents of the house, near which the attack was committed, saw the murder from the windows and called the ambulance.

Mekhtiyev’s friends and colleagues do not support the theory of the detectives. “We do not believe that Mekhtiyev was attacked for robbery,” chief press officer of the Russian Congress of the Peoples of the Caucasus Asya Israilova, with whom the killed man cooperated, told the Novye Izvestia daily. “Therefore, on Wednesday morning we wrote a letter to Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika with the request to put the criminal case under his personal control,” she said.

“If the attackers wanted to rob Mekhtiyev, they would not have attacked him in downtown Moscow, trying to smash his head and would just have seized his things,” Abdul-Vakhed Niyazov added. “This is the murder in the style of the ultranationalists. I believe that the attackers wanted to make the murder ominous in order to intimidate people of the non-Slavic nationality. Mekhtiyev’s things were seized only to frame up the robbery,” he said.

The killed Muslim public figure was cooperating with many public organisations, particularly the Russian Congress of the Peoples of the Caucasus, the Russian Council of Muftis, the Caucasus legal centre and the Islamic cultural centre of Russia, the newspaper noted. In 2003 Mekhtiyev underwent two attempts on his life. Then he was brought to the hospital after an attack of the nationalists.

The murder committed by the nationalists is one of the theories of the tragedy, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily notes. The newspaper noted that the precious things, including a mobile phone and the money, were seized from the killed man. However, he was killed with special brutality, as his throat was cut.

The newspaper recalled that Metin Mekhtiyev was born in Moscow, an aircraft designer by education, but did not work in his profession. His family is well-known in Azerbaijan. His father is a poet, his mother is an employer of the republican presidential administration. Metin Mekhtiyev worked at the Islamic Cultural Centre since 2000, headed the international department and then the staff of this organization.